“Follow me.”
She led him to Joe’s office and turned the lights on. Then she got the keys out, pulled the book off the shelf, and unlocked the bookcase.
“The Godfather?” Rico said. “Really?”
“I know.”
When she opened the stash room, Rico nodded appreciatively. He pulled on gloves as he looked into the room. “Nice work finding this.”
“Thanks.” His compliments always felt like a warm pat on the back. Maybe because Joe had been so stingy with nice words in the last decade or so.
Rico stepped inside the space and let out a long, low whistle. “Quite the arsenal.”
She leaned against the opening. The secret room was on the small side for two people. Not that she’d mind being closer to Rico. But she didn’t want to crowd him while he was working. “You think some of those guns could have been used in crimes?”
“It’s a very real possibility.” He put his hands on his hips. “I didn’t bring enough evidence bags with me. Some of this is going to have to wait. And some of it’s going to have to go in boxes.”
“Can you at least get the drugs out of my house? I really don’t like having them in here.”
Rico turned. “Drugs?”
“Check the cardboard boxes.”
He opened the one closest to him. Took a look inside. Nodded. “That will go with me.”
“There are two of those. The third one has playing cards in it. Probably marked. But it’s the ledgers you’re really going to find useful. I think. I looked at the most recent one. Didn’t make all that much sense, but it’s got names and numbers, dates, all stuff I’m sure you’d find riveting.”
He picked one up and flipped through it. He started nodding. “This is definitely going to be a hit. These are case makers, the kind of evidence that puts crews away.”
“Excellent.”
He looked up at her. “We owe you.”
She smiled. “Happy to help.”
He kept looking at her, his intense gaze almost hard to bear.
“What?”
He shook his head. “You’re a brave woman, Donna.”
She laughed.
“I mean it. This isn’t easy what you’re doing. The burden you’re bearing. I feel better knowing about your recently acquired skills, though. Means you’re able to protect yourself, that’s for sure.”
“I appreciate your words. I don’t know that I feel like those skills are really skills just yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there.”
He took a breath and went back to looking around the space, ledger still in hand. “I wish I could get a team out here. Really take this place apart forensically.” He paused. “I mean this room. Not your house.”
“Thanks for that.” She thought for a minute. “Come back as a remodeler. You could easily bring a second person with you. Even a third.” She lifted one shoulder. “No one would blink an eye at me wanting to update things in the house. Especially since I’m going to sell it.”
“Actually, these ledgers should be enough. Plus, I’m going to take pictures. But I will have to come back tomorrow. Does that work for you?”
“Sure. Just not too early.”
“Going out tonight?”
“I’m going to try the support group Claudette told me about.” She looked down at her hands, the awkwardness of having confessed such a thing making her break eye contact with him.
“I think that’s great.”
She looked up. “You do?”
“Sure. If there was ever a moment in your life you could use support, this feels like it.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
He closed the ledger and held it up. “I should get to work on bagging and tagging this stuff so I can load it and get it out of here.”
“Right. Well, I’ll be…somewhere in the house if you need me. Just yell.”
“I won’t have to. You should be able to hear me without me raising my voice.”
“Vampire thing?”
“Supernatural thing.” He tapped his ear. “We all have it.”
“Good to know. I’ll leave you to it, then.” She walked out of Joe’s office and meandered through the house, ending up back upstairs. She needed to go through her closet and see if anything still fit well enough to be usable, but something about getting undressed with Rico downstairs didn’t feel right.
Her phone vibrated. She checked the screen. A new text from Big Tony.
We need to talk.
That was the last thing she wanted to do. There was only so long she could put him off, she knew that. But dealing with him wasn’t high on her list. Not when he was probably the one who’d set her up.
Worse than that, really. He’d hired men to kill her. That was what the evidence pointed to.
She was sure he’d deny it.
Or would he? Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d nod in that steely-eyed way of his, then pull out his gun and finish the job.
Yikes. Was it possible he actually wanted her dead? That was a happy thought. Not. But if it was true, there had to be a reason. What did he think she was up to?
She sat on her bed, pondering that. No way was she meeting him at his house. Or hers. It would have to be a neutral location. When the meeting happened. Which wouldn’t be tonight, that much she knew.
But how long could she hold him off? How long until he made another attempt to kill her? Or had he only meant to scare her? She’d never know. Not really. Not with a guy like Big Tony.
And now she had the Russian Mafia to contend with as well.
She scooted back on the bed, pulled her knees to her chest, and hugged her arms around them. Lucky was asleep on Joe’s side. The sooner Rico could arrest Tony, the better. That would get one mob boss off her back.
She needed to ask Rico how quickly these arrests could happen, although she already had an idea they wouldn’t happen as fast as she wanted them to.
“Donna?”
She looked up suddenly, pulled from her thoughts. The query had reached her ears as if spoken in the same room, but she knew it hadn’t been. “Rico?”
“Downstairs. Ready to go.”
Wow. He’d been right about the hearing. Extraordinary. “Coming.” She ran down, which took seconds, and met him near the garage door. “Hey. Big Tony texted me again.”
“Again? How many times has he reached out to you?”
“A few. He wants to talk.”
“I’m sure he does.” Rico shook his head. “You can’t go alone. You need to pick a spot where we can set up a few people, be close enough to intervene if something happens. Which it could.”
“I know. I don’t want to talk to him at all. Or meet with him. But he won’t leave me alone, I know that. Can’t you just arrest him already?”
“I wish. It’s going to take some time to put this case together. We can’t jump the gun. It’s got to be hard, actionable evidence. Which these ledgers should provide, but we have to interpret them first.”
“What about the way he set me up? That has to count for something.”
“It could. But then you’d end up in the thick of it too. Especially because you were a willing participant in that job.”
“For a reason,” she emphasized.
“I know that, and you know that, but how do you think it’d look to a jury?”
She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t live like this, waiting for him to knock on my door.”
“You won’t have to. Not for long. I promise to push this case as hard as I can. In the meantime, maybe I can get a few local uniforms to double up on patrols around here. Just enough to keep him away.”
She frowned. “You don’t think he’s paying off the police? I don’t know that he is. But I don’t know that he isn’t. And I’m not sure I want to roll those dice.”
“Listen.” Rico bent his head a little. “You have the advantage right now. In a couple ways. For one thing, he doesn’t really know what went down at that drop-off, just that you survived and two o
f his new hires didn’t. He’s got to be curious. He probably assumes, like we did, that someone else showed up.”
“So?”
“So that might be what he’s trying to find out. Secondly, he doesn’t know what you’ve become. What you’re capable of.”
“Neither do I.”
“No, but you have an idea. And in a few days, I’m sure the picture will be even clearer. Hold him off as long as you can, and I’ll keep working things on my end. If anything breaks loose early, you’ll be the first to know.”
She huffed out a breath. “I don’t like this.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. But I’ll see you tomorrow and will hopefully have news for you then. Until then…there isn’t much else I can do without tipping Big Tony off to your involvement with us. Changing that alarm code would be a good idea. Make sure you have your phone on you too. In case you need to call me. Or the cops.”
“I’ll do that. I’ll be fine.” But the words tasted like a lie even as they left her mouth.
There was no way she was going to miss that meeting tonight. But in the meantime, she was calling Claudette again.
Donna needed to know more about her new skills. And how to use them. Especially since staying alive was getting harder every day.
Chapter Eighteen
Darkness fell within the hour after Rico left. One of the benefits of winter’s approach. It would be even better when daylight saving time took effect.
The first thing Donna did was dig out the manual for the alarm system and change the code. She should have done it sooner, but it had only just occurred to her that Joe might have shared the code with Big Tony. She wasn’t sure why he would have done that, but all Big Tony would have had to do was ask.
That was just how things worked in the family.
Once that was done, Donna didn’t want to stay home. Not after Big Tony’s text. And especially after what had happened with Yuri. But the meeting wasn’t until ten. It was in the city, so it would take a half hour to get there, but Donna was itching to leave early. Even if all she did was walk around, she wanted to be someplace else than in this house.
What did one wear to a meeting of newly turned vampires?
Her wardrobe options that fit were still slim, so she went with a pair of her new jeans, hew new black T-shirt, and a vintage Chanel jacket that had always been a little snug on her. It fit perfectly now and looked like a million bucks. She added ankle boots and some jewelry, grabbed her purse, then went downstairs to feed Lucky.
“Not sure what time I’ll be home, kiddo.” She scratched his head while he ate his lamb and rice stew. “Don’t let any strangers in, okay?”
He kept eating.
She gave him one last scratch, then stood and went out to the garage, making sure the alarm was on.
As the garage door went up, she stared intently in the rearview mirror, looking for headlights or movement. Any sign that someone was out there. There wasn’t anything, but that might only mean she hadn’t seen them.
She backed out into the driveway, then sat there until the door was down. She wasn’t taking any chances. All the landscape lighting was on, too, which was a lot. The place was lit up like they were having a party.
Good. Creeping around wouldn’t be so easy with that much brightness.
She got on the highway and headed for her destination, guided by her phone’s GPS app. The drive was nice. Traffic was lighter this time of night, and with her sharper vision, nothing was really that dark.
It was. But it wasn’t. She’d never experienced anything like it with human eyes. Was this how Rico saw things as a werewolf? She shook her head. A werewolf. Who would have imagined?
To say her life had changed recently was an understatement.
The idea of this support group made her a little nervous, but mostly intrigued her. Since Claudette had yet to respond to Donna’s attempt to contact her, Donna was hoping the group might answer some questions.
Would that make her look like a complete newbie, though? Sure, she was a complete newbie, but she didn’t want to come off as completely clueless.
Hard to shake the Mafia-born need to be respected, she supposed. Well, whatever happened happened. She needed information, and right now, this group was her best chance at getting some.
The meeting was still almost three hours away, however. She had time to kill and money to spend.
She went straight to 59th Street, parked in one of the nearby garages, then went across to Bloomingdale’s. Time to see about filling in the gaps in her wardrobe. She couldn’t wear the same two pairs of jeans for the rest of her life.
She walked inside and smiled at the familiar black-and-white-checked floor. The displays hadn’t been done for Christmas yet, but even so a feeling of holiday was in the air.
It had been a year since she’d been in this store. She’d gone on a shopping trip with the other wives, all in the name of Christmas, but very few gifts had been purchased. Mostly, it had been about their own wants. Donna was infinitely happier to be here alone.
The scents hit her first. She stood still and inhaled the heady mix of fragrances from the perfume department, the fresh flowers that were displayed as part of the décor, the earthy aroma of leather goods from the shoe and handbag sections, the faint undercurrent of cleaners and floor wax, and the curious note of what she suddenly realized was life.
More specifically, blood. As in what was coursing through the veins of her fellow shoppers.
It made her mouth water in the same way that baked goods used to. She wasn’t hungry, but the abundance of it was enticing.
This would be a good way to desensitize herself to such things. Or maybe in a few days, she’d get used to that smell, and it would fade into the background. Either way, she wasn’t remotely hungry. Not after Yuri. And she was here to shop.
So that’s what she did.
She loved the designer boutiques within the store. Prada, Chanel, Jimmy Choo. They went on and on, each area kitted out with pieces from the line. She swung through Chanel, but she didn’t need a purse.
From there she went on to Gucci. She picked up a scarf, breaking the ice with that purchase.
She had about seventy-five minutes until the store closed, so she had to work fast and efficiently. She went straight on to the women’s clothing departments, which were on the second, third, and fourth floors.
As she shopped, she realized something had changed. Her taste. Was that a side effect of being a vampire? Things she normally would have gravitated toward, like bolder colors, louder patterns, clothing with lots of embellishments…suddenly those weren’t what she was picking off the racks.
Instead, her arms were filled with sleeker designs, a few leather pieces, lots of black, and shapes that were far more body conscious. Maybe it wasn’t so much becoming a vampire as it was becoming a size four.
“Can I start a fitting room for you?”
Donna turned to see an older woman waiting on her answer. The saleswoman looked a little tired but was still maintaining a smile. Donna felt for her. The day was almost over, and now here was a customer about to make more work for her.
“Sure.” Donna peered at the woman’s name tag as she handed her items over. “Do you work on commission, Louise?”
The woman nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Donna smiled. “I think you’re going to have a good end to your night, then.”
The woman’s smile widened. “Well, I’m not a personal shopper, but if there’s anything I can help you with, I’m happy to do it. What’s your name, if I might ask?”
“Donna. And I do need help. I need to replace almost my entire wardrobe. If you could add some basics to that pile, that would be great. Keep them simple, but elegant and well cut. Black, dark gray, white, navy, a little red is fine. Maybe even purple. So are subtle patterns. Nothing too crazy, though, okay? And a mix of things. Loungewear, day wear, a nice dress or two. Pajamas. Across the board.”
The woman nodded. “I can ab
solutely do that. I’ll get right on it. Size?”
“Thank you. And I seem to be a four at the moment.” As the woman hustled off, Donna went back to picking through the racks. Louise’s help would double Donna’s shopping time. She’d be outfitted in no time.
Twenty minutes later, Louise ushered Donna into the largest dressing room she’d ever seen. There were so many clothes in it, the space felt more like someone’s closet.
“I hope this isn’t overwhelming,” Louise said. “It’s a lot to try on.”
“I’ll get through what I can,” Donna answered. She was about to see just how quickly she could make that happen with her new speed.
Louise pointed to the first rack. “I’ve arranged everything to make it easier. Pants are here in front, tops behind them, dresses on this rack. I put a few coats on there too. You didn’t mention that, but I took a shot.”
“No, that’s good,” Donna said. “I need a coat.”
“Great. Behind the coats are some pajamas and nightgowns.” Louise looked pleased with her work. “I’ll be right outside if you need another size or want to hand a few things out to be put back or taken to the register. Anything. Just give me a shout, Donna.”
“Got it.” Donna gave her a big smile and rubbed her hands together. “Here we go.”
Louise shut the door.
Donna stripped down, hung her things up, then dug in. She worked her way through the pants and tops first. Louise, as it turned out, had a great eye. Donna found things on the rack she never would have picked out because of the way they looked on the hanger. But on her person? Fabulous.
There were even a few pieces with swaths of muted color that Donna knew she would have shied away from if left to her own devices. Now, she was very glad Louise had approached her.
And the coats Louise had picked out were kind of amazing. Especially the steely-blue one with the black leather standup collar and matching knotted leather buttons. Donna put it on and instantly felt six inches taller and like she’d been crowned empress of some exotic winter kingdom.
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